


Coffee 22 (forgive my lack of imagination)

by mychemicalliteratureclub



Category: Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Barista Yossarian, Coffee Shops, Non-Binary Yossarian, Non-binary protagonist, non-canon coffee shop terminology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:54:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29465352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mychemicalliteratureclub/pseuds/mychemicalliteratureclub
Summary: If (fairly huge if but i'ts happened before) i keep writing this series later I plan to add more shorts from maybe a series of AUs. Right now it's just a cheeky coffee-shop fic. Without the essential romance part. Yet. I'm still working my way into the trope, my dudes. Features Yossarian, Dunbar, Orr, Clevinger and possibly a touch of Milo. AlSO i don't drink coffee cause brain go brrr in a negative sense so i'm Uniquely unqualified to write this trope. Please correct me if my coffee terminology is non-canon.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

Yossarian flicked a switch on the shining silver behemoth that dominated the café countertop and watched meditatively as the shining silver spigot coughed, then spluttered, then gushed a coal-black, steaming stream of rich, treacly coffee into the waiting mug.

Yossarian flicked a switch on the shining silver behemoth that dominated the café countertop and watched meditatively as the shining silver spigot coughed, then spluttered, then gushed a coal-black, steaming stream of rich, treacly coffee into the waiting mug.

"They didn't order a double shot," protested the new waiter, Clevinger, hovering remorsefully on the opposite side of the counter.

"I'm not giving them a double shot," Yossarian said, as they induced another cloud of steam into the air, and added a third shot to the mug. Clevinger seemed to be growing agitated, although it could certainly just be the weather. That morning was blanketed in a fine and penetrating rain, a rain dour, bleak and hungry for human warmth. That sort of weather was enough to agitate anyone, reflected Yossarian charitably, adding a fifth shot to the mug. They decided to broach the subject with Clevinger. They inclined themselves over the bench, keeping one hand on the coffee machine, and whispered conspiratorily into his ear "Don't let the weather get you down, dude. You have bigger things to worry about." Clevinger started.

"Like the order you're screwing up? Of course I do! That's not even my fault, but they're still going to send it back, and then they'll leave us a bad review, and our ratings will go down. You could get me fired!" Yossarian had almost forgotten about the beverage in their hand, and absent-mindedly added another shot of espresso.   
"You're not going to get fired," they explained, "because of a coffee. Besides, table 11 already has their order. Orr brought it over to them five minutes ago." They pointed. Clevinger gawped. The women sitting by the window were both sipping on lattés.

"They always have the same order. I make it advance on Sunday mornings," volunteered the other barista, Dunbar, from where he was lying on the floor behind the counter, staring up at the ceiling. Clevinger turned to see where the voice was coming from, and Yossarian leaned and grasped him by both shoulders.   
"You may be fired, however," they continued, in a reassuring tone, "because you're delusionally paranoid. It's unnerving. You need to get your shit together on a clinical level."

"Paranoid?!" protested Clevinger.   
"Practically insane," confirmed Yossarian, taking a sip of their coffee, which they'd decided was satisfactorily caffeinated.

"Paranoid?!" Clevinger restated, a little at a loss for words.

"Paranoid" clarified Dunbar from the floor. Dunbar found repeating things that other people said unsufferable and a restraint on enlivening conversation, which meant he never lost an opportunity to do so. Clevinger, however, had found his tongue again.

"The nerve of you, Yossarian, to call me paranoid, when you're the looniest apocalypse nut I've ever been in the same room as! No wonder you dropped out of college. The disagreements you had with the science department! Submarine methane ruptures, and chain reaction earthquakes, and exponential pandemics.. lunacy! You can't wrote serious papers on that stuff!"

Yossarian had actually dropped out of college because they couldn't afford to both stay on hormones and pay the tuition fees that Professor Cathcart, the dean, had raised for the third time.

"I didn't drop out because of my disagreements with the science department," he told Clevinger. "I actually dropped out of college because I punched the head of of the science department in the jaw and then seduced his wife."

Clevinger's jaw dropped for a second time, and his eyes flickered neurotically back and forth, as though some decisive action was required to defend the honour of the head of the science department, whom he, as the distinguished student he was, knew personally. Yossarian decided that Clevinger needed something to occupy himself with. "Go take table 22's order," they directed. "That will give you something to occupy yourself with." Clevinger, though shellshocked, was nevertheless not to be fooled.

"There is no table 22," he said.

"Oh, yes there is," said Yossarian. "and if we keep them waiting, who knows what it will do to our reviews. You may even be fired!"

Clevinger glared at him.

"It's on the second floor," supplied Dunbar.

"What second floor? There is no second floor either. You're having a laugh, the both of you!"

"No, there is a second floor," protested Yossarian. "Milo probably didn't tell you, when you got here, because he's afraid of heights. Here, Orr's just coming back, he'll show you. There is a second floor, isn't there, Orr?" He winked surreptitiously.

"Oh yes," Orr confirmed. "There's always a second floor. Right above the first floor. Here, I'll show you."

Still a little dubious, Clevinger followed Orr down the corridor at the back of the room, at the end of which was a staircase, with a storage closet at the top of it with a lock but no key. Orr, in his spare time, had a hobby of painstakingly picking locks, pointing out salient features of the mechanism to anyone who would listen. The storage closet's, as Yossarian knew from experience, was a favourite of his. It would be about twenty minutes before Clevinger caught on to Orr's ruse, and returned. They took the opportunity to enjoy the temporal peace of the subdued chatter interspersed with the noise of rain from an open window.

"God," stated Dunbark unenthusiastically.

"Hm?" Yossarian queried.

"Isn't" he finished.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dunbar has a discussion with Milo

"Listen, Dunbar, I'm going to need a little more cooperation from you. M & M has been bleeding money for the last few months, and - " Milo wiped agitated sweat from his unassuming forehead "- frankly, I don't think a, a, an overly philosophical stance from our baristas is going to do us any good. To be very frank, I think it's rather unprofitable. People come in here to drink coffee, not to discuss it for half an hour before deciding against it, based on your analysis of the risks of caffeine addiction." 

Dunbar was lying on the floor of the café. "Who's us?" He wanted to know.

"Why, the enterprise, of course! The team, the crew, the old crowd, the syndicate, of course. We're bleeding money!"  
Milo was lying, of course, but then so was he. Out of the corner of his eye, he contemplated a stain on the porcelain tiles. 

Dunbar lacked enthusiasm about the syndicate. He lacked enthusiasm about an extensive pantheon of prospects and ideas, but the syndicate was a particularly fervid area of nonplussedness for him. His doubts as to its efficacy, benefit, and even existence had fermented quietly for months, fed by the drudgery and meniality of barista work, and the continuing dissipation of his personal finances, in spite of the profits that Milo claimed to be realising. The threat of enjoying himself with his coworkers, and thereby irrecoverably losing his carefully cultivated reserves of time, had not helped. Moreover, he had done some research.

"You don't have executive control over this café any longer," he pointed out assiduously, "given that it was sold last month to Real Edible Foods Group."  
Milo looked shiftily at him and smiled deviously. 

"Real Edible Foods Group," he explained, "was sold the month before last to M & M Enterprises."

"Which, as of the month before the month before last, belongs to Real Edible Foods Group." Dunbar parried. 

"Which, if you'd been keeping your eye on the markets, is a subgroup of M & M Enterprises."

This had Dunbar stumped. "You bought your own company from yourself?"

"Not this time. I needed to liquidate M & M Enterprises for tax purposes, so it was necessary to incorporate it into a proxy buyer's portfolio. I trust you to believe me, Dunbar, and I'd hate to bore you, so I won't trouble you with the minutiae."

"By all means," retorted Dunbar. "I have a penchant for minutiae. Explain to me how a non-existent enterprise can buy itself. Spare no detail." 

"Well, that part of the deal was quite simple, really. Very simple. M & M was a subsidiary of Real Edible Foods. M & M, on the other hand, was not."

Dunbar blinked.

" I switched the M's around, don't you see? For tax purposes."  
Milo kept talking, but Dunbar had decided to stop listening, for sanity's sake. 

\----------------------------------------------

"Do you think," he asked Yossarian, when they came in to work the next day, "that there's a point to all this?" 

"This?"

"Life."

"May as well be," Yossarian said. "Though for the life of me, there are times when it seems there isn't."

"Isn't what?" he asked suspiciously.

"A point."

"To what?"

"This."

"This?"

"Life."

"Hmm," reflected Dunbar. "This life..."

"Everybody else seems to think so, at least," argued Yossarian. "so it would make you a damn fool to think anything otherwise. By the way, Dunbar, have you been lying on the floor behind the counter all night?"

He had, in fact, been lying on the floor behind the counter all night.   
"For all that we know," said Dunbar, "this counter could be the one fixed point in the universe. That would mean that, throughout the billions of years since the beginning of creation, everything in existence either has been, or still is behind it. However, all that we know is not a large amount, and all that you know is probably even less, so I'll ask you to desist from articulating your baseless and abstruse suppositions."

"Cool," Yossarian said. "next time you can crash at my place, okay? Lumbar stress can kill you if you don't watch out, not to even mention hypothermia, diphtheria, tetanus and heavy falling objects. I've been in decommissioned aircraft less dangerous than this café."

"Coooool," murmured Dunbar, rolling the word around his mouth. He got up slowly. "Hot chocolate with a splash of brandy?"

"Why not."

Outside, the morning traffic sang rapturously of the humdrum joy of existence.

**Author's Note:**

> there Are no End Notes... unless?


End file.
